Toll Free

Newsletter Signup

Time for an Upgrade? 6 Signs That You Need a New CMS

Your CMS is the heart of your website, acting as the central command that powers all the layout, presentation, integration, on-page SEO, data and image and document management functions to ultimately create the experience and fuel the success of your website. So, of course, you want to make sure your website is heart-healthy — and that means a healthy CMS that is fit to power your website.

Like any technology, CMS’s without upkeep lose their effectiveness over time, and websites can easily lose market competitiveness. Left unchecked, this can become a real liability to your business.

1. Your Website Mobility Isn’t Moving

If the answer is “Yes” to any of these when viewing your website on a mobile phone or tablet:

Do you have to squint to read a page of your site?

Does the mobile experience invoke fat-finger shame? (Is it challenging to select the right website options using fingers or thumbs?)

Are you unable to access information, make a purchase, conduct other transactions or just get around in your website easily — and quickly?

Is swipe, click-to-call, and other human-interface functionality not working — or inconsistent?

…then you need to upgrade your website — and with a CMS that supports its “Mobility”.

Your website needs to offer the same level of ease on a mobile phone as on any other device. This really isn’t a nice-to have for business websites anymore. Google announced last year that their rankings use a “Mobile-first” evaluation, and customers expect a satisfying web experience on any device they access. If they don’t get it, they are leaving — to engage with competitors who do satisfy their expectations from the very first impression.

So if you don’t yet have a fully responsive web design or comprehensive and convenient mobile website experience, a new CMS will help in building this new — and critical — foundation.

2. It Takes an Engineer to Edit

If you or your marketing staff (without the assistance, wait-time, or expense of programmers or designers) can’t easily and quickly make website content edits including: making new pages, changing words, formatting, placement, adding videos or images, editing size of images, adding documents or PDF attachments, updating SEO data and mark-up and more, then your website CMS’s lack of capability is diverting your time, resources, and money from your more important core marketing initiatives.

3. Integrations Don’t Play Nice

If you have to manually re-enter data (or use export-and-upload via csv files) that a customer input through your website to another tool in order to proceed with sales, fulfillment, or communications functions, then it is high time to re-evaluate your CMS.

Every CMS worth their salt today has integration points available, right out of the box. Connecting these to the business tools you use, such as CRM, marketing automation, e-commerce payments or shipping processing, may require a little support or assistance, but the capability is set up and there. If your CMS is unable to efficiently deliver the technology to streamline your business and marketing operations, it needs to be updated or replaced. Accuracy, operational efficiency, and marketing agility are just some of the bottom-line improving benefits you’ll enjoy by investing in your CMS.

4. It’s Just S-L-O-W

Yes, the world is moving at a furious pace. Charlie & The Chocolate Factory’s “Don’t care how — I want it NOW!” Veruca, is pretty much the temperament of the web-using public. (And if you’re being truthful, you, too, expect the same expedience when web surfing.)

Today “Slow” means anything longer than 3 seconds for a web page to show up. That’s just about five “I’m waiting…” finger-taps. And you can safely bet that the 3rd or 4th finger–tap is tapping back to Google to a competitor who does meet customers’ page-load time expectations.

There are a lot of current developments, including Google’s AMP project, that are delivering the fraction-of-a-second load speed advantages that yield miles-ahead results in search visibility ranking, web visitor acquisition, and customer conversion for businesses that implement them. A critical requirement for much of this implementation is an up-to-date CMS.

5. It’s Been a While

Industry sources have pegged the shelf life of a business website at three years, and advise businesses to do a check-up on their website quarterly. Most of the major CMS platforms release functionality updates multiple times each year. These updates are addressing technical and functionality improvements, security aspects, and web administrator or user experience items that are driven by competitive demands in this fast-paced, dynamic marketplace. So if you haven’t reviewed your website and CMS’s fitness to serve your current (and future) business needs in over three quarters or longer, it’s time. Set that check-up appointment today.

6. You Don’t Have One

Truly, for business websites today, this should not be the case. If it is, then you’re in store for an amazing world of website, marketing, and business improvements that attaching a CMS to your website offers. And you’ll probably be saving your brand from extinction in our digitally driven world.

Whatever the sign that indicates you may need to review or update your CMS, going through this process takes some specific organization and strategy. We’ve put together this Free Guide on How to Select a CMSto ease you through the process, ensure you’re asking all the right questions, and have the needed information to make the right choice for your business needs.